EuroBeachVolley champions move up in the Olympic race
Road to Paris
Few things will be more important in international beach volleyball in the next 11 months than qualifying for the Paris 2024 Olympics. The race to be a part of sports’ greatest event is always fascinating and generates endless interesting storylines involving the top teams in the world. We will be following the Olympic qualification process throughout the entire period and will also present some articles that will help you understand how it works and introduce you to some of the stars of the sport that will be chasing something special on their Road to Paris.
The 2023 A1 CEV EuroBeachVolley provided teams from the continent with a unique opportunity to earn FIVB Olympic Ranking points that their opponents from around the world wouldn’t have access to and several teams took advantage of it to boost their Olympic journeys to Paris 2024, most notably men’s champions David Åhman and Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden and women’s winners Nina Brunner and Tanja Hüberli of Switzerland.
The rankings, which will determine 17 of the 24 teams that will compete in next year’s Paris Olympics, are formed by the total points earned by teams considering their best 12 results in international and continental tournaments played until June 10, 2024, when the 17 best-ranked men’s and women’s teams will secure a spot in the Games.
Åhman and Hellvig have been inside the qualification zone since the Olympic race started, in January, even leading the Rankings for some weeks, but had dangerously slipped to 14th place before the EuroBeachVolley as they missed two months of competition while Hellvig recovered from a hand injury. The 800 points they collected with their victory in Vienna have straightened the ship for the Swedish, who are now in eighth place in the Rankings, with 5,080 points.
Fourth-placed Italians Paolo Nicolai and Samuele Cottafava also gained several positions with the 680 points earned in the Austrian capital, going from 12th to seventh with the same 5,080 points as Åhman and Hellvig.
Reigning Olympic and world champions Anders Mol and Christian Sørum of Norway didn’t make it to the semifinals in Vienna, but the 600 points earned with their fifth-place finish at the Danube Island helped them increase their lead at the top of the standings – they now have 1,520 points more than second-placed Brazilians Evandro Gonçalves and Arthur Lanci (7,500 to 5,980).
After the EuroBeachVolley, six other European duos appear inside the qualification zone for the Paris 2024 Games – Spain’s Pablo Herrera/Adrián Gavira (fourth – 5,340 points), Germany’s Nils Ehlers/Clemens Wickler (fifth – 5,240), Italy’s Alex Ranghieri/Adrian Carambula (sixth – 5,200), Austria’s Alexander Horst/Julian Hörl (11th – 4,560) and the Netherlands’ Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen (12th – 4,560) and Matthew Immers/Steven van de Velde (17th – 4,200).
Women’s champions Brunner and Hüberli started the EuroBeachVolley outside the qualification zone for Paris and are now inside it. With the 800 points collected in Vienna have now 4,020 and appear in 14th place on the list.
The other three teams that made it to the semifinals in Vienna have all played fewer tournaments than most of their international competitors in 2023 and still rank outside the top-17, but are now in better positions to compete for a spot in Paris – second-placed Spanish Tania Moreno and Daniela Álvarez are 21st (3,420), third-placed Germans Laura Ludwig and Louisa Lippman are 27th (2,360) and fourth-placed Swiss Joana Mäder and Anouk Vergé-Dépré are 20th (3,480).
Also inside the qualification zone are Swiss Zoé Vergé-Dépré/Esmée Böbner (fifth – 5,720 points), Italy’s Marta Menegatti/Valentina Gottardi (eighth – 5,140), the Netherlands’ Raisa Schoon/Katja Stam (ninth – 5,120), Finland’s Taru Lathi/Niina Ahtiainen (11th – 4,500), Latvia’s Tina Graudina/Anastasija Samoilova (12th – 4,360), Czechia’s Barbora Hermannová/Marie-Sara Štochlová (13th – 4,280), Spain’s Liliana Fernández/Paula Soria (15th – 3,860), Germany’s Cinja Tillmann/Svenja Müller (16th – 3,740) and Italy’s Margherita Bianchin/Claudia Scampoli (17th – 3,700), which gives Europe ten teams inside que top-17.
A new update to the FIVB Olympic Rankings will be made after the conclusion of next week’s Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Elite16 event in Hamburg, Germany, from August 16-20.